Michael Jackson's blonde, blue-eyed daughter, Paris, who looks even more Caucasian than most Caucasians, declares that she is an African-American:

"I consider myself black," she says, adding later that her dad "would look me in the eyes and he'd point his finger at me and he'd be like, 'You're black. Be proud of your roots.' And I'd be like, 'OK, he's my dad, why would he lie to me?' So I just believe what he told me. 'Cause, to my knowledge, he's never lied to me.

"Most people that don't know me call me white," Paris concedes. ..."I look like I was born in Finland or something."

If we can safely assume that Ms. Jackson is no biological relation to Michael Jackson, can one claim to be black simply because the person who raised you was black?  I think this is no more legitimate than Rachel Dolezal claiming to be black.  Possibly Ms. Jackson honestly believes that she is Michael Jackson's biological child.  She certainly has had an abusive childhood.

"When I was really, really young, my mom didn't exist," Paris recalls. Eventually, she realized "a man can't birth a child" – and when she was 10 or so, she asked Prince, "We gotta have a mom, right?" So she asked her dad. "And he's like, 'Yeah.' And I was like, 'What's her name?' And he's just like, 'Debbie.' And I was like, 'OK, well, I know the name.'"

Paris has, with impressive speed, acquired more than 50 tattoos, sneaking in the first few while underage. In June 2013, drowning in depression and a drug addiction, she tried to kill herself at age 15, slashing her wrist and downing 20 Motrin pills. 

Thomas Lifson adds:

The left/media/cultural elite have decided that sex is determined not by biology, but by one’s mental state.  So it is hard to consistently proclaim that racial identity is immutable.  Yet this would threaten the vast array of preferences certain racial groups enjoy from government and academia.

When Rachel Dolezal pretended to be black in order to advance her position in the NAACP, she was condemned.  But with Paris Jackson, we have a far more sympathetic figure declaring with at least some justification that race is a product of the imagination.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.